The trek

The trek  (E) Contest Entry for No Dialogue Contest January 2017 #2109476 by Chris Breva

483 words

Deer have a pretty tough life. They spend most of the fall trying to keep from dying of lead poisoning. Their winters are spent nearly freezing to death. Their summers are spent suffocating under their thick coats and the spring time is spent with the bucks fighting for dominance over the does. Let's just follow the life of one nameless deer for a day. Its late fall and he has a whole new set of antlers. Each year his antlers are replaced with new ones after he works very hard instinctively rubbing them against trees throughout the forest. The deer doesn't know why he rubs his antlers off. It's not his place to know. After all he can't think. He merely acts according to the impulses that drive him.

Today he woke up early. Early for him is around midnight. Prowling at night is much safer for a deer. There are fewer enemies when it's done at night. So once he woke up around midnight he went up the hill to an apple orchard. It had delicious wild apples and the tree was short enough to allow him access to its delicious treats. He spent most of the night eating. When you're a deer it's very important to eat as much as you can without foundering yourself. After all, in the winter the pickings are pretty scarce.

Once he finished eating he made his way down the hill to the river below. The water in the river really wasn't even fit for a fish to drink due to all the pollution in it but the deer wasn't able to know that. Instinct gave him a thirst that had to be satisfied. So he followed a doe down the hill. If the doe happened to flash her tail something had frightened her and he would stop where he was or quickly make his way some other direction. The doe didn't flash her tail however and he continued down over the hillside to the cesspool from which he would drink.

At the bottom of the hill was a wide path with a rock like substance from one side to the other. Bright lights went flying up and down it every night and many deer had lost their lives there. In fact there was a rotting carcass lying there tonight but the deer was oblivious to it being a deer. He was accustomed to the smell of death. With a very keen sense of smell deer can smell nearly anything. The deer neither knew nor would it have mattered that the decaying smell was one of his older brothers. What did matter was that he was thirsty and instinct was driving him to the river on the other side of the highway. He started to cross the road but a loud noise and bright light stopped him. He was frozen in place due to being blinded. That was the last thing he would ever see.